Tuesday, September 08, 2015

For nearly three
years, there has been considerable controversy and confusion about whether a
business-card sized papyrus fragment dubbed the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife is an authentic ancient artifact or not. The
current scholarly consensus already holds that the fragment is forgery. In
addition, a recent development has confirmed that the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife is a forgery created using a specific
internet edition of the Gospel of Thomas.
It seems that the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife forgery
debate has finally come to an end.

The Patchwork Forgery Theory

Shortly after Professor
Karen King of Harvard
Divinity School unveiled the Gospel of
Jesus’ Wife at an academic conference in September 2012, a scholar named Francis Watson pointed out
that the text appeared to be little more than a “patchwork” of words and short
phrases culled from the lone surviving manuscript of the Gospel of Thomas in Coptic (a form of the ancient Egyptian
language). Building on the work of Professor Watson and other scholars
(including Alin Suciu and
Hugo Lundhaug), I soon suggested
that the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife could
have been created by someone with limited knowledge of Coptic using a specific
modern edition of the Gospel of Thomas prepared
by Michael W. Grondin.

As I researched
the textual relationship between the Gospel
of Thomas and the Gospel of Jesus’
Wife, I began to collect evidence that ultimately convinced me that the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife was indeed prepared
by someone relying directly on the PDF edition of Grondin’s
Interlinear Coptic/English Translation of The Gospel of Thomasposted online in November 2002. I
discovered that the textual similarities between the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife and the Gospel
of Thomas were overwhelming. Basically, to create the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife,all
a forger would have had to do was “cut and paste” text from the Gospel of Thomas, switch a few masculine
pronouns to feminine (a single letter change in Coptic), and place two key
Coptic words (meaning “Mary” and “my wife”) into the “patchwork” text to create
its “sensational” content. The only other change that would have been needed
was the simple deletion of the two-letter Coptic word meaning “not” in line 5.

The figure below
illustrates the relationship between the Gospel
of Jesus’ Wife and the Gospel of
Thomas. It presents the Coptic text of the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife
papyrus fragment: text that appears to have been copied verbatim from
the Gospel of Thomas is underlined
(double underlined if it might easily have
differed). Parallels to the Gospel of
Thomas (with their manuscript page and line numbers in parentheses) are
noted beneath the Coptic text. The Coptic pronouns that appear to have been
changed from masculine to feminine are printed in green italics. The Coptic words
not copied verbatim from the Gospel of Thomas that look like they have
been specifically inserted into the “patchwork” text are printed in bold red:
“Mary” (line 3) and “my wife” (line 4).

Every single
line of the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife
contains one or more snippet(s) of text found in close proximity to each other
in the Gospel of Thomas; indeed, for
each individual line, the relevant snippets always appear in a single screen view
of the PDF of Grondin’s Interlinear
at 100% size on an average-sized laptop. In addition, the Coptic text of the Gospel
of Jesus’ Wife contains at least five suspicious features
(denoted by superscript Latin letters in the figure above):

(a)Line 1 of the Gospel
of Jesus’ Wife unexpectedly shares a line break with the lone surviving
Coptic manuscript of the Gospel of Thomas: both split the same word in
the same place. This could be explained as a coincidence, or it could be
attributed to a forger’s dependence on Grondin’s Interlinear. As a
line-by-line edition of the lone surviving manuscript of the Gospel of
Thomas in Coptic, Grondin’s Interlinear repeats all of that
manuscript’s line breaks.

(b)Line 1 and the corresponding passage in Grondin’s Interlinear both
unexpectedly omit the required direct object marker (ⲙ-) before the final word
visible on the line. This Coptic grammatical error might reasonably be compared
to writing “She played the dog for me” rather than “She played with the dog for me.” A few other
ancient manuscripts do contain an analogous mistake, but the Coptic grammatical
error could also be attributed to a forger’s dependence on Grondin’s
Interlinear. The 2002 PDF version of Grondin’s Interlinear omitted
the direct object marker by accident as the result of a typographical error (unlike any other
version of Grondin’s Interlinear).

(c)Line 4 unexpectedly
omits the Coptic word ϫⲉ (je),
which would function something like a comma and an opening quotation mark in
English. This omission could be explained as non-standard (if not completely
unattested) Coptic grammar, or it could be attributed to a forger’s dependence
on Grondin’s Interlinear. A forger might well have omitted the Coptic conjugation
by accident because it is separated from the (seemingly complete) Coptic phrase
meaning, “Jesus said to them” by a line break in Grondin’s Interlinear.

(e)Line 6 also contains a verb that has been conjugated
twice (that is, the single verb in the line has been modified by two verbal
prefixes); * as a result, the line is ungrammatical. The text could be compared to an
English statement something like, “Let no wicked man does bring.” When the
pertinent words from Grondin’s Interlinear are juxtaposed, the ungrammatical
line of Coptic text makes perfect sense . . . in English:

The following table summarizes
the different explanations that have been offered to explain the suspicious
textual features of the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife:

While all five of
the suspicious textual features of the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife could hypothetically
be explained if the papyrus fragment were an ancient artifact, it is startling
that so many suspicious textual features appear on a papyrus fragment so small that
it contains just seven lines of text with more than a single word. The simplest
(and most persuasive) explanation for these suspicious textual features is that they are all the result of a forger’s
dependence on Grondin’s Interlinear.

[The owner] sent
along an electronic file of photographs and an unsigned translation with the
bombshell phrase, “Jesus said this to them: My wife…” (King
would refine the translation as “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife … ’”) (emphasis
added)

The appearance
of the word “this” in the translation of the most notable line of the Gospel
of Jesus’ Wife was odd because nothing in the Coptic text of the papyrus
fragment corresponds to this word. After discussing the matter, Professor
Goodacre and I realized that “this” was apparently a translation of the
unexpectedly absent Coptic conjugation ϫⲉ (je) in line 4, and the word was mistranslated as “this” . . . just as in Grondin’s
Interlinear.

We concluded
that the “translation” of the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife that the owner of the papyrus fragment had
given Professor King was almost certainly dependent on the English of Grondin’s Interlinear, just as we
believed that the papyrus fragment itself was almost certainly dependent on the
Coptic text of Grondin’s Interlinear.But we did not have access to the owner’s
“translation” at the time, so we had no way to test our theory.

Confirming Evidence of Forgery: The Release of the Owner's "Translation"

On August 27, 2015,
Professor King generously released the English “translation”
that the owner had provided her, and it is dependent on the English of Grondin’s Interlinear (just as we had
predicted). The extensive verbal correspondence
between the owner’s “translation” and the English of Grondin’s Interlinear
cannot reasonably be attributed to anything but direct literary dependence.

The owner’s “translation” of the Gospel
of Jesus’ Wife displays evidence of dependence on Grondin’s Interlinear in every line with more than one word. It
includes repeated English “translations” of Coptic words not even present on
the papyrus fragment itself, incorrect translations of Coptic text, and
distinctive translations as well – all of which can be traced back to Grondin’s
Interlinear.

For example,
compare the pertinent passages in Grondin’s
Interlinear with the transcription of the first line of the owner’s
“translation” of the Gospel of Thomas:

The English
words and word order in both Grondin’s
Interlinear and the first line of the owner’s “translation” are identical, but
they should not be. The word that means “for” appears in the Coptic
text of Grondin’s Interlinear, but it
does not appear in the owner’s Coptic transcription of line 1 (or on the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife papyrus fragment).
Grondin has placed “ - - - ” beneath the word ⲅⲁⲣ (gar: “for”) and inserted the English word “for” in parentheses
before “my mother” in his translation, presumably because he preferred to use English
(rather than Coptic) word order. The person responsible for the owner’s “translation” has obviously
not translated a Coptic word meaning for from the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife because no such Coptic equivalent is present.
Obviously, the word “for” has been copied directly from the English of Grondin’s Interlinear.

This observation
and many others like it demonstrate that the owner’s “translation” of the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife is not an actual translation
of the Coptic text of the Gospel of
Jesus’ Wife papyrus fragment; it was prepared by someone incapable of
translating Coptic who borrowed straight from the English of Grondin’s Interlinear.

[For a more
detailed discussion of the evidence that the owner’s “translation” borrowed
directly from the English of Grondin’s
Interlinear, see my recent blog posts here and here.]

Conclusion

We can now be confident not only about the modern origin of the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife but also about how
the text itself was prepared. The Gospel of
Jesus’ Wife was created simply by “cutting and pasting” text from the Gospel of Thomas, switching a few pronouns,
and inserting the key Coptic words meaning “Mary” and “my wife” into the
“patchwork” text. In addition, the modern forger has left many “fingerprints”
on this purportedly ancient text:detailed
analysis of the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife
has revealed that it contains at least five suspicious textual
features that are most persuasively explained by a forger’s dependence on the
Coptic of Grondin’s Interlinear.

On the basis of
the theory that the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife
papyrus fragment was prepared by someone using Grondin’s Interlinear (and the presence of the single word “this”
in a seven word excerpt from the owner’s “translation”), we were able to
predict that this “translation” would show direct dependence on the English of Grondin’s Interlinear. Our prediction
has now been confirmed by the recent release of the owner’s
“translation.”

I think it is
now safe to assert that the legitimate Gospel
of Jesus’ Wife forgery debate has come to an end. Ideally, any ongoing
research efforts related to the Gospel of
Jesus’ Wife will be focused on identifying the person(s) responsible for
the forgery. The still-unidentified individual who brought the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife to Professor King also
provided her with at least two more documents suggesting that the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife was examined by a
pair of German scholars in Berlin in 1982 (fifteen years before it could have
been created), as well as an obviously
forged Coptic papyrus fragment containing a part of the Gospel of John. I hope that
scholars can work togetherto prevent
the dissemination of additional forged papyrus fragments that could disrupt historical
research.

* In technical terminology, the
single infinitive in the line has been modified by two conjugation bases.

Saturday, September 05, 2015

Since the recent release of the “translation” that the owner of the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife gave Karen King and the revelation that it is directly dependent on the English of Grondin’s Interlinear, a few questions have been asked about whether someone might have used
Grondin’s Interlinear to translate an authentic ancient papyrus fragment. The answer is, quite simply, “No.” The person responsible for the owner’s “translation” must have been involved in forging the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife papyrus fragment (either as the actual forger or by working very closely with the person who was).

There are two basic reasons that I can make this assertion with confidence. First, the “translator” made some remarkable – even incredible – observations about the Coptic text of the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife for someone who had extremely limited knowledge of Coptic. Second, nobody would attempt to translate a papyrus fragment of unknown content using an interlinear translation of another text.

Remarkable Observations by the “Translator” about the Coptic Text
The owner’s “translation” of the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife is actually an interlinear translation – that is, it presents a transcription of each line of Coptic text on the papyrus fragment with English translations in between the lines.

Examining the transcribed lines of Coptic text reveals that the person responsible for the owner’s “translation” was not well-acquainted with this ancient language. This person did not even know the language well enough to be able to distinguish between similar-looking letters of the Coptic alphabet: the letter delta is repeatedly used in place of the letter janja in the transcription (twice in line 2 and once in line 4). Yet, this person still managed to make some remarkable observations about the text.

For example, in line 6, there is a scribal error: it appears that the copyist made a mistake that could not be satisfactorily corrected in attempting to write epsilon-iota. Roger Bagnall, AnneMarie Luijendijk, Karen King, and everybody else who viewed images of the papyrus fragment for nine days after they were available online apparently failed to recognize this error, until the trained eyes of Coptic papyrologists Alin Suciu and Hugo Lundaug called attention to it. I argued at length on pages 341–42 of my New Testament Studies article (on the basis of comparative measurements of practically every epsilon and iota on the papyrus fragment) that the third-from-last character in line 6 is some kind of epsilon-iota hybrid (an attempted correction of a mistake), and Coptic papyrologist Malcolm Choat affirmed that the identity of this character should indeed be regarded as uncertain.

Meanwhile, the person responsible for the owner’s “translation” had already noted the scribal error by writing “(Sic!)” at the end of the Coptic transcription of line 6. Someone who had not yet mastered the Coptic alphabet could have not realistically recognized a scribal error that scholars initially failed to observe . . . unless this person was directly responsible for the error (or informed by the person who was).

Translating a Text of Unknown Content with an Interlinear of another Text

Realistically, nobody would ever attempt to translate a papyrus fragment of unknown content using an interlinear translation of another text. First of all, anybody with the ability to decipher and translate a Coptic papyrus fragment would use a dictionary to look up unknown words; a translator would want to determine the precise meanings of the words on the papyrus fragment in their actual context, not in the context of another text. Second, if the content of the papyrus fragment were unknown, it would be impossible to know whether all the words and phrases needed for translation could even be located in the interlinear; and, if they could, it would still be very difficult to find them (especially the phrases, which could not simply be looked up in an index). *

Professor King, who has studied Coptic and whose research focuses on early Christian literature not included in the New Testament, initially failed to recognize that the text of the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife was almost entirely derived from the Coptic Gospel of Thomas. Francis Watson, who actually suspected that the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife was dependent on the Gospel of Thomas, did not even succeed initially in identifying all the pertinent parallels between the two texts. It took the efforts of scholars trained in Coptic collaborating internationally to determine that the text of every line of the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife could be traced back to the Gospel of Thomas. Ultimately, it took years of analysis with an electronic, searchable text of the Gospel of Thomas to identify precisely which passages in the Gospel of Thomas had been used to create the Coptic text of the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife.

For someone who knew barely any Coptic to translate the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife using Grondin’s Interlinear, it would have been necessary to locate the approximately 30 Coptic words in the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife found in different passages scattered throughout the more than 3000 words of the Gospel of Thomas. Locating the pertinent text needed to translate the papyrus fragment using Grondin’s Interlinear would have been complicated by the fact that three of the Coptic words are only partially preserved on the papyrus (at the start and end of line 1 and at the end of line 3) and two (meaning “Mary” and “my wife”) do not appear verbatim in Grondin’s Interlinear at all.

Further, the person preparing the “translation” would not only have needed just to locate individual Coptic words but also phrases consisting of two, three, and four words; and not all of the phrases in the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife appear in identical form in Grondin’s Interlinear. Some have been modified by a letter or two. In three of the phrases, third-person singular masculine pronouns have been altered; in one, the two-letter Coptic word meaning “not” has been deleted in the middle of the phrase. It is simply unimaginable that a person with only minimal knowledge of Coptic could have identified the pertinent passages in Grondin’s Interlinear that could be used to “translate” a papyrus fragment of unknown content.

[To give the reader a sense of how difficult it would have been for someone with minimal knowledge of Coptic to use Grondin’s Interlinear to translate the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife, I have prepared my own edition of Grondin’s Interlinear (with Michael Grondin’s permission). In this edition of Grondin’s Interlinear, I have highlighted all the pertinent passages in the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife. I suspect that anybody who glances at this annotated edition of Grondin’s Interlinear will be able to see the essentially insurmountable challenge that a person would have faced in locating all the pertinent passages in Grondin’s Interlinear that could be used to create a “translation” of a papyrus fragment of unknown content.]

Conclusion

There can be little doubt that the person responsible for the owner’s “translation” was involved in forging the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife papyrus fragment (either as the actual forger or by working very closely with the person who was). The “translator” made observations about the Coptic text of the papyrus fragment that someone who did not know Coptic well could not realistically have made without being a participant in the forgery. In addition, it seems undeniable that the “translator” could only have used Grondin’s Interlinear to prepare a “translation” of the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife if this person already knew precisely which passages had been used to forge the papyrus fragment. The “translator” was clearly involved in forging the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife papyrus fragment (either as the actual forger or by working very closely with the person who was).